


Soulsearching

by LyraNgalia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Dresden Files - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Bars, Drinking, Gen, bar conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A night's work at Zero brings Justine face to face with an unexpected comrade in arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soulsearching

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to jumble for the rapid fire beta. Written for evil_little_dog for the halfamoon impromptuthon, using (loosely) the [prompt ](http://community.livejournal.com/halfamoon/95007.html?thread=595999#t595999) "already damned".

Justine usually didn't stay long when she settled the accounts for Zero, but she had run into Thomas in the halls of Chateau Raith, and seeing the look in his eyes had been hard. So she went up to the office and took care of the books, but, instead of heading straight back to the waiting car, she wove her way through the maze of bodies and catwalks until she reached the bar.

"Everything alright?" the bartender asked as she squeezed up to the bar.

"Everything’s fine," Justine reassured him over the throb of bass, smiling gratefully as the burly man glared another patron off a stool and waved her into it. "Long day at the office."

The bartender gave her a sympathetic look and poured Justine something pink and frothy. "Something special I've been working on," he explained at her questioning look.

Justine took a cautious sip, and the drink slid easily down her throat, sweet and tart with an edge of bitterness. "It's good. What do you call it?"

"He can call it the stars, poppet, but it'd still be just fire and sunshine." The voice was soft, breathy even, but somehow still managed to cut through the music pulsing through Zero. Cool fingertips brushed against Justine's hand as a dark haired woman with far-seeing eyes slid up against the bar. The newcomer cocked her head, staring at the bartender, and continued, “Your heart is beating. I can see it in your eyes. But Snow White is coming and she’ll cut it out and eat it all up.”

The woman’s singsong voice unnerved Justine and the bartender both, though the bartender hid it particularly well, wiping down the counter as if the newcomer had just said something about the weather. Perhaps he was just experienced at dealing with drunks. “Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“Spike promised to get me the stars, but he tried to give me a stake through the heart,” the woman said, turning to Justine with those dark, knowing eyes. “Thought I wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Another of your specials for our friend, I think,” Justine said to the bartender, tapping the rim of her glass with a calm finger. The man nodded, obviously relieved at not having the woman talk to him about hearts anymore. “Perhaps it was just a mistake,” she ventured to the woman. It seemed unlikely, but Justine knew more intimately than most how thoughts could be derailed, and again how calm words could bring attention back.

The bartender mouthed a thank you to Justine and busied himself with the request as the woman gave her a serene, faraway smile. “Burning the house after the massacre was a mistake,” she said seriously. “I don’t like fire. But Spike was mean and nasty, all because of her. Nasty blonde Slayer with hair like sunshine. Everyone loves her, loves her even if she burns with sunshine, loves her with their bloody _souls_.”

“Is it such a bad thing?” Justine couldn’t help but ask. The woman wasn’t sounding any better, but there was something to her voice, to her entire presence, that seemed to call to a greater truth, a _something_ more than just a woman saying bitter, nonsensical things in a bar. “To love someone with your soul?” Out of the corner of her eye, Justine could see the bartender wince at the question as he set one of the frothy, fruity concoctions at the woman’s elbow.

The woman picked up the drink without looking, the pulsing red glow of Zero’s lights glinting off her polished nails. “I loved Spike. In London and Prague and all the smoky bars in the world. He’d give me hearts. But we didn’t need bloody souls. Just hearts and blood and slaughter. Just Spike and Dru.” The woman, Dru, downed the drink in one neat gulp, and Justine could hear the raw pain in her voice, the pure heartbreak. “But then he left, left and went away, straight to _her_ and now he’s got a _soul_.” She turned to Justine, who sipped her own drink delicately and gestured to the bartender to resupply her new friend. “Love doesn’t need bloody souls to be real.”

Justine gave the bartender a grateful nod when he slid another, larger drink in front of the other woman. Despite the fact that she didn’t quite understand the whole souls-heart metaphor Dru was using, Justine heard truth among the madness, and for a moment she thought of Thomas. She’d heard his claims of damnation, of the corruption of his soul, more times than she could count. What would he make of this woman, of her claim (however metaphorical) that souls didn’t matter in love? That hearts were more than enough?

For a moment, a lump rose in Justine’s throat, and she took a larger than normal swallow of her drink. If only he could believe it himself. The woman looked at her again, a knowing smile curling over her lips as she nodded at Justine. “You know, poppet. That it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s a better man than Spike.”


End file.
